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this post was submitted on 04 May 2024
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politics
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Some people seem way too okay with there being two bad choices for president.
Others seem way too resistent to any attempt to make one of those choices not bad.
There's a difference between being okay with something and begrudgingly working with circumstances while simultaneously criticizing people who give up because things aren't perfect.
I'm not okay with Biden being the best candidate, but that doesn't make abstention a viable voting strategy.
Begrudgingly working with circumstances and giving up because things aren't perfect can easily be the same thing. That criticism has got to come with some cognitive dissonance.
What the fuck are you talking about?
"giving up" takes many forms.
Well yeah, but that's a pretty broad spectrum. Giving up by not participating at all is a higher degree of apathy than "giving up" by realistically evaluating your situation and recognizing that participating in a deeply flawed system will still have a chance of moving the needle in the direction you want it to go, or at least stopping it from moving the other direction.
Right, so I wouldn't equivocate students protesting staunch support for a genocide as 'giving up'. These are specifically people trying to move the needle of a deeply flawed system.
To quote old song, they're 'young people speaking their minds getting so much resistance from behind.'
Your only acceptable measure of that is if I vote for Biden which makes me unable to realistically evaluate my situation by definition. There's no point in making this argument. We aren't going to see things the same way. One of us has to compromise. If you can't see it's moderates and liberals turn to make some serious and material compromises leftwards then you never will.
No, that's not what I'm saying at all. The situation is that you will realistically have two choices for president. Voting for anything other than one of those two choices is effectively pointless as it will have no impact on the outcome except to withhold a vote from one of the two candidates that are going to win.
Anything else that you choose is symbolic at best but effectively meaningless.
If there's a plan for a better outcome I can white knuckle my way through a lot of situations in life. Sure, shit happens and sometimes we just gotta deal with it but if I feel like this isn't something we're going to be able to avoid in the future I want to opt out entirely. Think of a camping trip where the tent is leaking. If we're not planning on replacing the tent I don't want to go camping again.
So with Biden sure I can white knuckle through it if I think 2028 primaries are going to produce someone better but they won't. You can blame "young voters" if you want. Personally I point to the fact that nobody is apologizing for voting for Biden in the 2020 primaries. If they're not apologizing that means they don't see how their decisions negatively impacted me or don't see a problem with negatively impacting me so they're going to repeat the behavior.
I'm not interested in white knuckling through that. People are free to keep camping with a leaky tent I won't stop them but I won't be participating any more than I can control.
Please don't respond with some kind of counter comparative example or taking my made up comparison to some kind of scientific degree. It's just a conceptual tool for the purposes of the conversation. Telling me it doesn't apply isn't going to change the way I view the situation or my decisions.
If I get the sense that 2028 would somehow be better I'd reconsider.
Even though you preemptively asked people not to provide a counterpoint, I feel the need to highlight a problem with your analogy that you seen to already be aware of.
Your position of "I don't want to go camping anymore" is a fantasy. The only way to achieve that is to emigrate to another country. The real situation is: you're going to sleep outside. Do you want a leaky tent or a ragged old tarp? Those are your only two choices. If you do not make a choice, then you are leaving the choice up to everyone else.
If you're okay with that, then sobeit. It is your right to opt out of participating in the political process, but that doesn't change which tent you're going to end up sleeping in. If you're an American, you're along for the ride whether you like it or not. Your choice to opt out does not change the outcome, it merely cedes control to everyone else.
I tend to agree with your main point though. I'm pretty exhausted with everyone around me selecting the same deteriorated tents that we've been using for the last 50 years because "that's the only way enough people will select it over the moldy tarp" instead of considering a new one that actually works, or at least has fewer leaks.
That's fine. Enjoy our camping trip.
The phrase "there are 3 bad choices for president" is true, but is so hilariously reductionist. I'm not saying you, in particular, are evaluating it through this lense, just that there is a difference between the "bad" here, and it's really, really obvious.
It is a reference to the two party system that constrains the election to what is often considered the picking the lesser of two evils.